They were both very quiet when they finally turned away from the fence and started home. They did not speak till they reached the white moonlighted road, stretching past the cotton field. Then Mary looked up at the stars saying reverently, "Somehow I feel as if we'd been taking part in the _first_ Christmas. It was a sort of camp-yard that the Star of Bethlehem led to. Don't you remember, 'there was no room in the inn' for the Child and His mother? It was a manger the gold and frankincense and myrrh were carried to. I feel as if we'd been following along--a little way at least--on the trail of the Wise Men." "Me too," confessed Norman. Then nothing more was said for a long time. Mary could find no words for the next thoughts which puzzled her. She was picturing all the Christmas trees of the world brought together in one place, and trying to imagine the enormous forest they would make. Then she fell to wondering what it was about them that should make "the eye laugh and the heart laugh, and bring a blessing to the silver hair as well as brown" as the old couple had sung in the garden. All over the world it was so. Since looking into the windows at other peoples' trees, and then causing one to bloom and bear fruit herself for the homeless campers, she felt that she had joined hands with that circle which reaches around the world. She was no longer an alien and stranger among the people of Bauer. The "Weinachtsbaum" had given her a happy bond of understanding and kinship. It had taken the hard, hopeless look out of the older faces around the camp-fire, for awhile at least, and made the little ones radiant. And at home--she remembered gratefully how Jack had burst out whistling several times while he helped to trim it. And the tune that came in such lusty, rollicking outbursts was one which he never whistled except when he was in high good humor with himself and all the universe. She was sure that he wasn't acting then--he couldn't have been just pretending that he was glad, for it sounded as it always used to do back at the Wigwam. She wondered why the tree had had that effect. And then, like an answer, a verse popped into her thoughts; one that she had spelled out long ago for Grandmother Ware, letter by letter, one little finger pointing to each in turn. It was a verse from Revelation, about the tree that stands on either side of the river, clear as crystal, "_which bare twelve manner of fruit, and the leaves were for the healing of the nations_." Then all of a sudden she understood why those shining boughs with their strange fruitage of gifts have power to bring hope and good cheer to lonely hearts the world over. They are the symbols, which the Spirit of Christmas sets ashine, of that Tree of Life. And the Spirit of Christmas is only another name for Love, and it is Love alone, the human and divine together, which can bring about the healing needed by hearts in every nation.